Bedtime book: Dickens's Bleak House and the best fog in literature

Tonight's book is Bleak House by Charles Dickens, a novel of 1853. Its opening pages contain the best description of London fog in literature, and an autumn evening is the right time to read them. The text has long been in the public domain, so we are printing the passage in full.

The passage: fog everywhere

"Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. <...> Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon and hanging in the misty clouds."

ONLYWAY NEWSLIVELaw · 17.10What becomes free on 1 January, and what an author earns from a bookLife · 17.10Bedtime book: Dickens's Bleak House and the best fog in literatureLife · 17.10Russian-language books in Britain: where to buy them and what delivery costsLaw · 17.10GRO certificate copies and apostilles: costs, timings and limitsTravel · 17.10Travel in London: daily and weekly Oyster and contactless caps by zoneMoney · 17.10Your bill went up mid-contract: when you can walk away without a penaltyLife · 17.10East Bank in Stratford: two free V&A museums, a theatre and BBC studiosHousing · 17.10Tenancy deposit: 5 weeks, 30 days and how to get it backJobs & Business · 17.10Disciplinary hearings and grievances at work: your rights, the deadlines and the cost of silenceJobs & Business · 17.10Payslip, P45 and P60: the paperwork your UK employer must give youONLYWAY NEWS · appInstall the ONLYWAY NEWS appFresh UK news, classifieds, key dates and exchange rates on your home screen, one tap away. Free.NewsClassifiedsCalendarRates

Charles Dickens, Bleak House, chapter one, from the text published by Project Gutenberg.

Then Dickens turns to the light itself: "Gas looming through the fog in divers places in the streets, much as the sun may, from the spongey fields, be seen to loom by husbandman and ploughboy. Most of the shops lighted two hours before their time—as the gas seems to know, for it has a haggard and unwilling look."

Why read it tonight?

Because the fog soon stops being weather. A paragraph later Dickens ties it to the point: "hard by Temple Bar, in Lincoln's Inn Hall, at the very heart of the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in his High Court of Chancery." The suit of Jarndyce and Jarndyce drags on for decades, eats the inheritance it is fought over, and ruins the people fighting it. The fog of chapter one is not scenery — it is the portrait of an institution.

The novel is long, and that is its evening virtue: it will last you more than one night. Chapter one takes about fifteen minutes and works as a story in itself, so even if you go no further the evening is not wasted.

Who was Dickens, and where did he live?

Charles Dickens, 1812–1870, according to the Project Gutenberg catalogue, which carries 240 of his titles. London is not a backdrop in his books: he knew the city on foot, wrote in streets, and gave courts, chambers and debtors' prisons real addresses.

ADV · A003We build websites for tradespeople and sole traders — £219Customers see your work and prices and message you straight away. Ready in 3 days, £219 instead of £438.Advertise here

His only surviving London home is open to visitors: the Charles Dickens Museum at 48 Doughty Street, Wednesday to Sunday, 10am to 5pm, last entry 4pm. Around Halloween it stages evening performances of his work — "Signal-Man & Trial" on 30 and 31 October and 1 November, from £25, recommended for ages 12 and over, and a family event, "Tales from the Haunted House", on 29 October, from £8, for ages 7 and over.

The novel's own locations are a fifteen-minute walk away: Chancery Lane and Lincoln's Inn, where Dickens seats the court, and Temple Bar, which he calls a "leaden-headed old obstruction".

Where to get the book

Free and lawfully, from Project Gutenberg: the English text is there in full because its term of protection expired long ago. Under UK rules, copyright in a literary work lasts 70 years after the author's death, and Dickens died in 1870.

For a Russian edition, look in a library through the Library Hub Discover catalogue, or in a bookshop with a Russian section. One catch worth knowing: a translation carries its own copyright, and modern Russian translations are still protected. That is why we translated the passage above ourselves rather than reprinting someone else's.

The cover for this issue was built by our newsroom from our own night photograph: a lane, railings and a burning lamp. Above, the same frame is shown alive — the flame in the lamp flickers. It is our illustration, not a publisher's cover: we do not reproduce those.